Saturday, 5 May 2018

Big Finish Reviews+ The Helliax Rift by Tony J Fyler



Oh Helliax, yeah, says Tony.

It’s often said that we only saw the best of Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor when his Tardis team had thinned out to just one companion in The Caves of Androzani. That move gave the Fifth Doctor time to flex his Doctor-muscles, to fill up space with his persona and really take events by the scruff of the neck, for all they took him right back on Androzani, faced with a planetfull of venal people.

The Helliax Rift, by Scott Handcock, has that same Androzani vibe – the Fifth Doctor arrives on Earth alone, chasing an enigmatic alien signal, only to run into UNIT, but not as we know it.

This is a UNIT somewhere between the comfy days of Lethbridge-Stewart, Yates, Benton and Harry Sullivan and the stompy ‘Oh, shhhhame’ days of Bambera and Zbrigniev. As such, the members of this incarnation of UNIT are an unknown quantity, and for the most part, they regard the return of their scientific advisor as rather a pain in the bum as they too are on the trace of a peculiar alien signal…and quite a bit more.

This is the UNIT of Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Price, Corporal Linda Maxwell, and Lieutenant Daniel Hopkins, successor to Harry Sullivan as UNIT’s chief medical officer. It’s Hopkins (played by Blake Harrison) who becomes the Doctor’s de facto companion on this adventure, but crucially, Handcock pushes the Davison Doctor forward, being less diffident than he sometimes was on screen, with space and time to strut about a bit, check-mate those who threaten him and simply get on with the business he believes is his. Like Androzani, it’s a Fifth Doctor story that shows you what the Fifth Doctor was really capable of, and that earns it many a gold star. The new UNIT mob are at the very least, interesting in this outing – they’re scheduled to come up against Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor and Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh in subsequent releases – even if, throughout this story, you begin to wonder whether Lieutenant-Colonel Price, played by Russ Bain,  is really fitted to a career in UNIT, so regulation army does he seem. But then, back at the very beginning, who knew that Lethbridge-Stewart fellow would come so good?

The fundamental story of The Helliax Rift has resonances in other corners of the geekiverse – there’s a research facility where aliens are experimented on, bringing a later-Buffy vibe to proceedings, and there’s a story of intergalactic love which tips its foldable panama hat at Guardians of the Galaxy II, but the heart of The Helliax Rift has more in common with Kramer Vs Kramer or Mrs Doubtfire than anything more obviously geeky – the lengths to which people will go to ensure the welfare of their children, and the inherent bond between parents and children, no matter what the cost, no matter what the distance.

While the Doctor and UNIT pursue their various inquiries, alone and together, there are plenty of mini-puzzles to solve, allowing the Davison Doctor to show his mettle and his mental agility, and prove why UNIT really works better with a genius on board. The action elevates in logical steps, giving the story solid stabs of cliffhanger that keep you listening and spin the time away without you being too distinctly aware of what happened to the couple of hours of the runtime. If there are occasional pauses where people stand around asking questions – there’s quite a lengthy interrogation sequence when UNIT catch up with the researchers – they do at least add that essential sense of UNIT procedure that made the Seventies UNIT stories what they were. No-one quite has to call Geneva for authority or back-up, but the pauses show the fundamental difference between the Doctor’s maverick approach and that which would be required of an Earthbound military organisation.

The Helliax Rift is a story built on those three pillars – New UNIT, family connection, and a barnstorming role for the Fifth Doctor. Of the three, it’s really the Fifth Doctor that you’ll take away from The Helliax Rift though, Davison, who’s been given some sublime scripts recently, like David Llewellyn’s The Serpent In The Silver mask, pushing the Doctor to the front of the action and the front of the listener’s mind as well or better than any of the other incarnations have ever done. Davison of course is long past the point of needing validation of his incarnation, but stories like Androzani and The Helliax Rift show the strength and development of his Doctor’s character from his uncertain ‘never quite sure what you’re going to get’ beginnings into the Time Lord in full command of his powers and skills. That later, more confident Fifth Doctor is the one who turns up in UNIT’s backyard to tackle The Helliax Rift, and it makes a story of family ties and UNIT running around a forest into something brighter, stronger, and more indefatigably stamped with the flavour of the Fifth Doctor at his absolute best.

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